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UK.gov to make adults give credit card details for access to Facebook or TikTok
- parkingrift 5y agoI don’t care for porn as the motivator, but social media should be absolutely unavailable to children.
- CraigJPerry 5y agoI don’t know. Wireless radio (it will mean mothers no longer sing to their children), various genres of music over the years (will harm development of children), newspapers (in the 30s there was an obsession with young men reading newspapers rather than talking to their colleagues or family, like a mobile phone concern but in the 30s - if you Google this story you can find some impressive pictures of lines of men waiting at a bus stop and every single one is reading a newspaper). It wouldn’t surprise me if kids are better adjusted to social media than adults. The kids don’t need to go through a readjustment period of trying to convert their expectations to the new reality. Kids will still bully each other with or without social media. There will Still exist dangers which can’t be controlled without active parenting and an attentive society. I see the attraction of banning social media below a certain age but i can’t help think that open discussion with kids would be far more effective.
- parkingrift 5y agoWe don’t need to guess. It’s been well studied and reviewed. Social media is extremely harmful for children, and especially young girls. It’s also extremely harmful for adults, but adults can make their own decisions.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- crmd 5y agoYoung victims of schoolyard bullying could in the past retreat to safe spaces - a friend’s house, a favorite art or music teacher’s classroom, the computer club. Today, the bullies are posting cruel messages and media about you in huge group chats and creating fake social media accounts under your name to embarrass you. The abuse follows them into their bedrooms. There’s literally nowhere for them to go to hide. This is why tween suicide rates are skyrocketing, especially for girls.
- CraigJPerry 5y ago>> Young victims of schoolyard bullying could in the past retreat to safe spaces I don't think you meant it this way but what you're saying there is that victims of bullying who have been physically harmed in school yards could have just retreated to a safe space and avoided it. Clearly that's not true. I don't think you meant that but the words you've used are clearly wrong. The one advantage of social media is that it does have an off button, in a way that the bully screaming in your face in the lunch hall queue does not. >> This is why tween suicide rates are skyrocketing I'm sure it's a contributing factor but this is just a statement we can't back up other than with faith that we think we understand what's happening. The truth is we don't fully understand. >> to embarrass you It is definitely a viable medium for bullys to harm victims. What i'm getting at is the problem is the bullying rather than the medium. If you play whackamole with all the ways a person can persecute another, you'll never solve it.
- TheMightyLlama 5y agoI would rather my passport number to be honest.
- rswail 5y agoAge verification is to Tories as abortion is to Republicans.
- danboarder 5y agoWhat could possibly go wrong... I don't expect Facebook or TikTok to oppose this very much, having credit cards on file is conveniently closer to making more money.
- alephnan 5y ago> having credit cards on file is conveniently closer to making more money It will be a drastic change to pivot the company from one where the customer is the product to the customer. Credit card input also introduces friction and bounce rate of user signup. This would hurt Facebook's user growth and MAU KPIs
- Bancakes 5y agoPeople already make accounts with phone numbers, I suspect credit cards won't be different.
- resonious 5y agoIt's a bit easier to memorize a phone number than a credit card number.
- Freak_NL 5y agoThe number of active credit card holders in the UK is somewhere in the 35 million range. The number of adults is somewhere over 56 million. There is quite a mismatch there. Unlike the US, owning a credit card is not standard for most people in the world. People tend to get them for online shopping abroad, and for travels out of their currency zone as a back up.
- tobylane 5y agoI don’t know if a debit card counts, because they are 16+. Many of us took a while to move onto credit cards but still had access to cashless, online and overseas payment.
- barcoder 5y agoIn pre-Brexit Britain we were promised less friction on the internet because we wouldn't have to accept cookies [1]. Who would have thought there would be more friction for just about every part of British life? /s [1] https://preprod.metro.co.uk/2021/08/27/no-more-cookie-pop-ups-government-wants-post-brexit-gdpr-overhaul-15161637/ https://preprod.metro.co.uk/2021/08/27/no-more-cookie-pop-up...
- pharmakom 5y agoHah the irony of clicking that link!
- mft_ 5y agoI get your dislike of Brexit (and such sentiments get votes on HN) but this isn’t ‘friction because of Brexit’ - a post Brexit government could choose to not do this at all, or choose to implement something better. It’s just an implementation of a crappy idea by a crappy government.
- MattPalmer1086 5y agoSetting aside Brexit itself, the government currently in power were elected partly on promises to cut such friction, not increase it. But yeah, it's a crappy, incompetent government who are currently announcing all kinds of badly thought out populist ideas to distract attention from the trouble their leader is in.
- Barrin92 5y agoFor Facebook or TikTok it's a sensible move because they are social networks trying to connect natural persons. Not just child protection as mentioned in the article but ecommerce scams, misinformation, catfishing or botting would be cut down if you could verify that the online identity represents who it claims it does. It would be good though if there is some identity standard across platforms rather than the existing patchwork solutions that exclude people without say, credit cards. Digital ID systems like in South Korea or Taiwan seem good because they're uniform across the country and comparable to national ids.
- encryptluks2 5y agoWhat you are suggesting wouldn't help improve those situations, and in fact will likely make them worse. Governments and companies have been historically bad at protecting information. Companies will see it as an opportunity, governments will abuse it and the user will end up just having more information online for people to use against them. So called misinformation will change in definition to only support government-approved talking points. Before you know it, disagreeing with your government and pointing out lies will just cause them to say they have a reason now to use the information you provided to go after you and try to ruin your life. Employees and government agents will now have a plethora of more data to do lookups on their exes, enemies, etc. It is bad all around.
- sofixa 5y agoThat's a slippery slope argument if I've ever seen one.
- pdpi 5y agoOne particular bit that tickles me about this is the mandatory credit card checks for age verification on porn sites. Yesterday’s obvious attempt at fraud is tomorrow’s legal obligation, and the fraudsters are going to love it.
- hughrr 5y agoIndeed. You can tell a historically bad technical measure by the following phrase being repeated forever: ”we will never ask you for…”. I await this for credit cards.
- hughrr 5y agoOh no they’re not. People will start buying shitty VPNs advertised on prime time TV instead and entirely side step the issue but create two more at the same time. Think we need a new national anthem now along the lines of https://youtu.be/P1CyPjQQTAM https://youtu.be/P1CyPjQQTAM
- asplake 5y agoSome people might, most won’t. Most under-18s certainly won’t.
- iqanq 5y agoMost people, under-18s or not, will download whatever comes first when looking for "free vpn" on the app store.
- shapefrog 5y agoI would rather give facebook my credit card info than a shitty VPN my credit card info and my money. Use code shittyVPN for 95% off our Best VPN in the World service for life.
- pmlnr 5y ago> and potentially any other platform where users can post their own content So... the internet?
- pharmakom 5y agoThey are also talking about doing it for Reddit, which makes me really sad.
- pdpi 5y agoThere is no “talking about doing it for Reddit” here. Targeting a measure like this at specific companies is all sorts of gross, it has to be a case of what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. There’s no reasonable definition of who should and shouldn’t be affected by this where Facebook has to comply but Reddit doesn’t.
- hgomersall 5y agoThe reasonable basis is that Facebook have consistently shown themselves to be a bad actor. I'm not arguing that age checks are a good thing, just that I don't see a reason why the law can't explicitly target companies that are detrimental to society. You might then argue Reddit should also be included for similar reasons. I would suggest this is generally better than an attempt to codify in law some kind of definition of what companies should be covered.
- boffinism 5y agoThis feels like it could be resolved by technology. I am happy to identify myself to government entity A to prove my age, but I don't want A to know what sites I visit. I want to visit site B, but I don't want to identify myself. Is there no API that will allow B to verify my age via A, without A finding out what site B is, and without B finding out anything more than my age bracket?
- mjfisher 5y agoI believe they're talking about doing that, but contracting out to approved 3rd parties instead of the government for age verification. I still don't trust them to do it securely, and I worry deeply about the chilling effect it will have on the internet as a whole.
- asplake 5y agoPretty sure that’s already on its way. One way we avoid giving card details to untrustworthy sites is to use a third party verification service. Suspect that this is well enough known that the headline should be construed as clickbait.
- MattPalmer1086 5y agoThere are privacy preserving technologies that can do this. See the work of Jan Camenisch for example: https://jan.camenisch.org https://jan.camenisch.org But I doubt anything so well thought out would be implemented for this. Current government suggestions are credit card checks, checking identity against government passport records, or your mobile phone service provider. I don't even understand the mobile phone one. My son has a mobile phone, but I'm the account holder according to the phone company. He's too young to enter into contracts for a start!
- 1_player 5y agoThis might be a more helpful link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Anonymous_Attestation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Anonymous_Attestation
- samwillis 5y agoThere was a thread about this yesterday [0], this is almost certainly not going to happen. I think based on the number of times they have tried to legislate for this, most recently in 2019, I would put the odds of it happening (even in a hamstrung way) at less than 10%. Big company’s (Facebook, etc) will lobby against it, they will argue about what the threshold of requirement is. Then there is the logistics, privacy, security and cost factors. Not going to happen. I believe this is all about making it look like politicians are doing “something” without actually doing anything. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30256984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30256984
- toyg 5y agoThe fact they keep trying despite repeatedly being humiliated by market realities, though, indicates the lobbying pressure by pro-censorship groups is quite high. This is bound to produce something eventually.
- anomie 5y agoAre they being humiliated though? Feels like they get lots of press when announcing this kind of stuff which sits well with some target part of the electorate, then when the whole thing gets abandoned it happens with almost no attention. The current government seems to be well aware that most of the time announcing a policy has a much higher ROI than actually implementing one (cf all the times pre-existing spending commitments get recycled in new announcements)
- shapefrog 5y ago> announcing this kind of stuff which sits well with some target part of the electorate I really dont see anyone in the electorate clamouring for any of this stuff. Announcing the same policy being told it is a shit idea and announcing it again 6 months later is much harder to sell than the recycled spending (which they tend to just lie and say it is in addition to the last lot they announced anyway). That said, the electorate dont actually care much (unless it is a penny off the price of a pint or something) so it is hardly a humiliation when these ideas go nowhere and it makes the government look busy. I can only assume that the driver is the security services, or just recycling past homework to look busy. As noted in many other comments they try all sorts of seemingly stupid ideas in this space - banning all encryption has failed countless times, adult verification is already a thing on mobile networks, and logging every online activity has slipped through and passed.
- habosa 5y agoPeople don’t realize how invasive the UK govt is when it comes to internet monitoring. Today if you try to access adult content on a UK mobile device you get blocked by age verification. You have to call your mobile provider and prove your age (it’s a once-per-contract thing). One of the ways you can prove your age is with a credit card. But I imagine it’s a large deterrent because not many people want to call Vodafone and ask permission to look at pornography. They’d probably just rather get a VPN.
- d13 5y agoI’ve come to the realization I really should be using a VPN, for so many reasons. I really know nothing much them - any recommendations?
- bambataa 5y agoI’ve been using Proton VPN with no major issues. Would be interesting to know what others here think of them.
- rococode 5y agoMullvad seems to be the most popular recommendation on HN nowadays. A couple recent threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28551960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28551960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29903695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29903695 I've been using them for a while, very happy with it so far. Stable connection and high speeds - good enough that I often forget I have it on - and a nice selection of locations. They even accept cash! Each account is just an ID so you can mail your account number and some money to them and payment will be processed. Mozilla VPN also uses Mullvad's servers behind the scenes.
- osivertsson 5y agoAt this point one must assume that all traffic is monitored and stored, maybe it is or maybe it is not, but assume so. At least all metadata is stored for some time. Using a VPN moves the point where this occurs and may obfuscate some things, but also realize that many VPNs are probably in some form associated with nation-states and therefore makes their job easier.
- scim-knox-twox 5y agoSure, let's give even more personal information to Big-Tech.
- toyg 5y agoI have a gut feeling this is a lead balloon, meant to be shot down so that other stuff can pass untouched. This type of bill is typically full of horrible little clauses that would never clear Parliament on their own, but if you bag enough of them together, pushing them all at the same time, eventually some will make it through.
- accountofme 5y agoI think you mean Lead Zeppelin...
- toyg 5y agouhm, no...? https://wordhistories.net/2021/09/20/lead-balloon/ https://wordhistories.net/2021/09/20/lead-balloon/ It's a common idiom in political discourse. Or was this a bad joke?
- mellavora 5y agothe band chose the name Led Zepplin as a pun on the phrase lead balloon.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- accountofme 5y agoThe band Led Zeppelin is called that because keith moon(iirc) from the who said forming the supergroup "would work as well as a lead Zeppelin". It was a historical joke :)
- hardlianotion 5y agoThat would be Led Zeppelin...
- oxfordmale 5y agoThis needs to be seen in the context of the political situation in the UK. Boris Johnson, the current PM, is currently on this 9th and last political live. During the strictest period of lockdown, when UK citizens where not able to say goodbye to loved ones dying in hospitals, several parties were organised at his residence . It is alleged he attended two of them himself and was photographed drinking beer. In attempt to rescue his political career, he has announced several "red meat" measures and this appears to be one of them. Over the years several attempts have been made to introduce this. Just like past attempts it will face a heavy lobby from the adult content industry and social media companies. More importantly this government will likely not be around long enough to actually introduce it (the consensus is that Boris will be gone after the May local elections). It will almost certainly drop off the radar of a subsequent government as there are much bigger and more important issues to tackle after Covid. In the unlikely event it will get introduced, it will be delayed for years. For past measures Ofcom, the media regulator, was asked to classify all adult websites to determine if they fall in a category that requires age verification, and as you can imagine, this can take a while. In addition age verification is only required for websites that allow users to upload content, not commercially sourced content. There are endless loopholes here, however, likely adult websites will just block user content from UK visitors. It is not like there is a shortage of commercial content. Of course VPN providers will do well out of this too.
- toyg 5y agoIt's good not to underestimate the situation though - few things are as dangerous as a desperate government. If they can start wars to divert attention, they can certainly force bad laws. This goes double in the UK, where the executive is effectively all-powerful in practice since the Blair reforms.
- patates 5y ago> few things are as dangerous as a desperate government. If they can start wars to divert attention, they can certainly force bad laws To support this, see Turkey and Russia for current examples. The usual dying government cycles between "we are now super nationalistic and everyone who doesn't join us are terrorists" and "but think about the children!!11" like clockwork. The damage these cause lives much longer than the creators. It totally makes sense to tread with care.
- John6653 5y ago[flagged]
- tupac_speedrap 5y agoOi, you got a loicense for that smut?
- jsnell 5y agoIs there really a lot of porn on those platforms? I would have expected porn to be forbidden by the content policies of any big service with user generated content, it's probably the easiest kind of abuse to automatically detect, and it's something the services are very motivated to keep out since they can't sell ads on that content. I have never heard of either of those platforms as having a reputation for hosting porn.
- frankfrankfrank 5y agoEasy solution … give up Facebook and TikTok and all the other social media addictions like a sane and healthy person. Social media is essentially the tobacco of today; a toxic, destructive, addictive force.
- ben_w 5y agoAs with tobacco, giving it up is not as easy as saying it. We can do without it if it was just switched off, but everyone else who is using it, is itself a reason to be part of it.
- loudtieblahblah 5y agoThis would be amazing in the US
- nickthegreek 5y agoThankfully, there is 0% chance of this happening in America.
- loudtieblahblah 5y ago
- rswail 5y agoKeeping credit card details will expose private companies to the requirements of PCI to store them. It's against those rules for private companies to keep the cardholder information connected to the card details like the PAN. The PANs aren't even allowed to be stored unencrypted and access to them is subject to PCI as well. Plus it means that people that don't have those forms of identification will be restricted from using the internet. Libraries won't be able to offer a lot of services, the "unintended side effects" are enormous. But never put it past this particular British government from establishing the very best in footguns.